TWA Flight 800: Engines offered no answer in 1996

Jun. 19, 2013

SMITHTOWN - A quick `` tear-down '' of TWA Flight 800's four engines has found no sign of foreign matter that could have caused or contributed to the jumbo jet's explosion and crash, investigators said yesterday.

Briefing reporters for the first time since Tuesday, investigators also said divers had recovered a major piece of wreckage from the heavily damaged center section of the plane, thought to be the likely focal point of the plane's explosion.

Neither discovery, however, did anything to confirm or rule out any of the three theories behind the explosion - a bomb, a missile or a catastrophic breakdown - and in some ways deepened the mystery.

`` The puzzle analogy really works, '' said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. `` I don't think that anybody is now saying that there's evidence to lean one way or another. ''

Although the FBI hasn't yet started to interview flight victims' families, they are beginning to question passengers on the Athens-to-New York trip that preceded last month's explosion.

Two more bodies were recovered yesterday, bringing the total to 203 with 27 victims still missing. Yesterday, the seventh of nine Westchester County victims was identified: Nicholas Bluestone of Pound Ridge.

The lack of foreign debris in the engine would seem to lead investigators away from the theory that a heat-seeking missile, which zeroes in on the heat from a plane engine, caused the crash. However, Francis said more thorough testing would have to be done on the engines, including tests of the `` rub strips, '' which would show signs of scarring from the engine turbine blades, indicating from where the force of explosion came.

The center section of the plane, just forward of the wings, is being reconstructed first in the Grumman hangar in Calverton, Long Island, where recovered wreckage is being taken. The piece of wreckage recovered Thursday night includes part of the top fuselage from thatsection and a portion of the center fuel tank.

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But where it was found seems to contradict earlier assumptions about where on the plane the explosion occurred.

Pieces of the heavily damaged midsection have been found to the extreme southwest of the 5-mile-long debris field, about 10 miles offshore. That area is closest to John F. Kennedy International Airport, the plane's point of departure, and is thought to contain wreckage that was blown away from the plane and fell into the ocean first.

The latest recovery came from a debris field to the northeast that contains pieces from the rear of the aircraft.

`` It continues to be extraordinary, '' Francis said. `` You think that things are starting to come in in a pattern . . . and then something comes in from left field. ''

Seats recovered from the center section of the plane showed heavy burn damage but no shrapnel from an explosion, Francis said.

Cockpit instruments that have been analyzed line up with the readings from the plane's black boxes, which earlier showed all systems normal aboard the plane until the explosion, he said.